Live Demonstration: Tactile Sensory Feedback System based on UWB Optical Link for Prosthetics

The proposed live demonstration presents the development of a tactile sensory feedback system based on an optical communication link for prosthetic applications. The system is composed by a tactile sensor array of 32 sensing elements (taxels), an electronic interface circuit combined with the data acquisition and digitalization, a digital coding unit, an optical fiber communication link, a digital decoding unit and an electrotactile stimulator connected to flexible electrodes. The data acquired from the tactile sensors are coded by using a UWB-based optical modulation and transmitted by an optical fiber to the user through electrotactile stimulations. The use of the optical communication link highly improves the system robustness to electromagnetic disturbances, the transmission data rate as well as the power consumption.